Building Your Own Webpage

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Step 1 - Create your webpage on your local computer
Here's how I created all my webpages, using Netscape Composer. If your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is a large one, they may offer online tools for building a webpage. If you decide to use those, you can skip to the next section.

	Create a folder on your computer where you will build your webpage.	Name this folder something that will uniquely identify it as YOUR webpage when it gets uploaded.	Example: if your name is foo, name your folder foopage	This folder will end up with multiple files in it: index.html, pictures, icons, etc.
	Install Netscape Communicator if you don't have it. Composer is a tool that is included in Communicator.	click on icon	I'm sending you to this page because it has older versions of Netscape. Download Communicator 4.8	You can use Netscape 6 (or later) if you really want to, but I don't recommend it. It takes a million years to start up, and the page editor isn't as good.
	Right-click on the template icon, and select "Open in Composer"	template.html	Or you can select "Open in New Window" and then ....	Go to File Menu and select Edit Page.
	Change the Page Title and author. Do this immediately, before you forget!	Right-click on an empty place and select Page Properties from the Pop-up menu	Select the General tab.	Change the Title, author. Add a description if you like.
	Change the Header Text	Just select the Text and Type.	Change font, size, etc. using the toolbar
	Save under the name index.html.	From File Menu, select Save As	Navigate to your webpage folder	type in a name and save (index.html).
	Change the email link!	There's an email link at the top of the page (under the email graphic) and at the bottom in the last line.	Click on the link object, select the link icon from the toolbar, and change foo@kahnhome.org to your email address.	If you would like a webmail address or email forwarding address with the form foo@kahnhome.org or foo@tatge.org, contact me.
	Copy graphics into your webpage folder. You can put them into subfolders if you want, but it's simpler if you leave everything in one folder.	Graphics can include digitized photos, clipart, buttons, background colors.	Photos should be in .jpg format, and should be SMALL. No more than 200 pixels in any dimension.	Other artwork can be found all over the Internet. Or you can follow the links above to borrow from my collection. Just right-click on an image you like and choose "save image as..."
	Edit and add text. Just click where you want to type, highlight text and use the toolbar.	Add images - click where you want the image, then click the "image" icon on the toolbar. Click on Choose File and select an image from your folder.	Add a link - select text or image on page, then click the Link icon.
	Tables are your friends.	Tables help you position blocks of text, pictures and icons where you want them. Without tables, things slide all over the page at the whim of the browser that is viewing them.	I am including a few tables on the template page to get you started. You can add new tables with the table icon on the toolbar.	Existing tables can be modified by right-clicking anywhere in the table. You can delete the table, add/delete rows and columns, change the background, change the border, etc.
	Edit HTML Source	From Edit Menu, select HTML Source.	That's the "program" that is executed by your browser to display your page. You can edit it directly if you're brave.	I'm not going to tell you how to do this. It's interesting to see what the HTML looks like, though.

Step 2 - Publish your webpage

	"Publishing" means uploading your webpage files to a  computer that is set up for web hosting.	This  means that other computers can connect to the hosting machine and download the web pages for viewing with their local browser software.	That is what you do when you "visit a website." You download files to your machine and look at them with your web browser.	-
	The best place to publish your website is on a server at your own ISP (the company that provides your Internet service, e.g., AOL, ATT, earthlink.)	Almost all ISPs provide 5M or more of space for a small personal webpage. Some providers, such as ATT Broadband, provide astounding amounts of free file space. (60M last time I looked)	So the first thing you should do is go to your provider's website and look around. The larger providers have step-by-step instructions on how to publish your webpage, and frequently online tools for building your webpage.	Example: attbi.com. Follow link to My ATT, and click on tab to Personal Webpages. Wow!
	Linking to the family website	Once you've published your webpage, send me the URL and I will add a link to it from one of the family webpages.	The URL is the string that you type into your browser that gets you to your webpage.
	Publishing pages on kahnhome.org server.	If you just have a few pictures or text files that you would like to publish (family history, for instance), email me the files and tell me how you would like them linked.	If you want to publish a webpage and your ISP does not offer free space for webpages, contact me.	There is a way to do set up so that other people can safely upload files to my webserver,  but I haven't set it up yet.
	Installing an FTP client	If your ISP has space for you, but seems to expect you to have your own "FTP Client" installed, here's a good free one: WS_FTP	It's pretty easy to use. The hardest part is figuring out what IP address you need to contact and what your username and password is. That's somewhere in the introductory information that your ISP sent you when you signed up.	If you still need help, contact me.